Liberals who were comfortable with the 2008 candidacy of Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, should remain open to giving President-elect Donald Trump a chance. Franken, a career comedian and writer/performer for “Saturday Night Live,” sharply pivoted from an entertainment career to serious policy and politics as a senator. Franken was a flamboyantly ribald figure during his “Saturday Night Live” days, but even most of Franken’s GOP colleagues would likely admit he has approached Senate duties with understanding of the seriousness of the role.

“If the voters of Minnesota would rather be represented by a hack like Norm Coleman than laugh off a few jokes that didn’t work, then they should stop complaining about being stuck with professional politicians,” Kinsley presciently wrote in 2008 before Franken defeated Coleman by 312 votes after months of recounts and legal fights. “And the real joke will be on them.”

Why shouldn’t Kinsley’s words apply in the case of President-elect Trump, who hasn’t yet assumed office and was swept into power because he, too, lacks a typical politician’s resume? Trump’s electoral victory was much clearer than Franken’s — recount efforts pushed by Jill Stein and Hillary Clinton have been impotent.

Franken is the only person ever to both serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee and play a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Paul Simon of Illinois — in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

Leibovich writes that Franken “has been strenuous in his attempts to leave his comic past behind, though he was once busted for making dismissive faces and hand gestures behind Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader gave a floor speech in 2010. ‘This isn’t “Saturday Night Live,” Al,’ McConnell said, admonishing Franken, who later wrote a note of apology.”

Franken wrote a satirical novel called “Why Not Me?” which details Franken’s own fictitious celebrity run for president. Leibovich writes: “His character is corrupt, clueless and unprepared, but a confluence of unlikely factors — and Franken’s wildly popular vow to eliminate A.T.M. fees — somehow propels him to the White House, where things quickly go off the rails. President Franken loses his mind (punching Nelson Mandela in the stomach during a meeting!) He is the subject of a special congressional inquiry — the Joint Committee on the President’s Mood Swings — and is forced to resign after five months. Franken published ‘Why Not Me?’ in 1999.”

Franken has now said he is taking a “wait-and-see approach” to a Trump presidency, after spending the entire 2016 campaign mocking and dismissing Trump’s chances, including telling the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that he was “a world-renowned expert on right-wing megalomaniacs” because he had received “a doctorate in megalomaniac studies from Trump University.”

On Twitter last Thursday, Franken questioned Trump’s recent tweet saying that under his administration the United States would expand its nuclear arsenal. Understandably, Trump’s tweet raises questions. But perhaps Franken, of all people, would recognize the difference between satire and bluff vs. actual policymaking. Liberals like to tell religious conservatives not to take the Bible literally, only figuratively, at best, for its broader truths. Perhaps they should heed their own advice on Trump.

That said, Trump’s critics, including liberals and #NeverTrump conservatives like me, were critical not just of Trump’s divisive language. We were also concerned about what the language meant about Trump’s intended policies. Yet as House Speaker Paul Ryan pointed out in a recent interview with Sean Hannity, Trump himself has walked back his extremist language from a policy standpoint on things like the Muslim ban. Trump has also apologized for his comments on women and called for his more virulent supporters to heel. As President Obama himself has said, Trump is certainly not an ideologue.

Many conservatives, including Mitt Romney, have been able to reconcile our concerns, for now, offering Trump a blank slate with which to begin his administration. Trump’s ongoing critics would do well to remember the Franken case and also the words of visionary billionaire Peter Thiel, a key figure in the Trump transition team, who said, “I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally, so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment, their question is not, ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ or, you know, ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’ What they hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.”

Trump is not changing U.S. policy through one tweet, and only time will tell if Trump actually proves to be a level-headed, strategic thinker. Perhaps this tweet was a shot across the bow, a signaling that his America First strategy will not leave any option off the table. In an age of U.S. weakness and division under President Obama, an America First approach could be exactly what we need to usher in an American revival.

Comments

Carrie Sheffield is the founder of Bold. She is passionate about storytelling to empower and connect others. A founding POLITICO reporter, Carrie contributed on political economy at Forbes and wrote editorials for The Washington Times. After earning a master’s in public policy from Harvard University, she managed credit risk at Goldman Sachs and researched for Edward Conard, Bain Capital founding partner and American Enterprise Institute scholar. She earned a B.A. in communications at Brigham Young University and completed a Fulbright fellowship in Berlin.

That statement caused me to laugh out loud. Trump joked at rallies about all sorts of things. He definitely veered away from seriousness numerous times. Some of his proposals were off the rails, but he often didn’t get the sort of scrutiny/heat an ordinary politician would receive because Trump wasn’t taken seriously. So you got that right.

Trump is definitely an entertainer. He’s very good at entertaining. The Apprentice was entertainment.

It’s not bad to be an entertainer, but some of us are wondering whether Trump will EVER get serious. This is the one thing missing from Carrie’s piece– it’s not clear that Franken ran his political campaign in the erratic not-serious fashion Trump did.

Well I think that is the problem. People look at him as a entertainer and not a businessman. Entertainment for Trump is more like a side gig. Most people who are entertainers devote their entire lives to it. That isn’t the case with Trump and its easy to dismiss people and ideas you disagree with.

Isn’t that the first rule of the Art of War or something like that. Never underestimate your opponent..

That was Hillary’s weakest point along with pretty much every major media and news organization.

This stuff gets posted as red meat for liberals on Salon by non-Trump supporters (Carrie) then cross posted here.

People who read BOLD are not her targeted or intended audience. Although I imagine it could be a difficult balancing act when you run a website like this and write for a FAR left, vile website like Salon. That isn’t even considered a credible source for news or information.

Eventually they will all be considered fake news on Facebook and Google.

The very piece you are commenting on is mostly PRO-Trump. It’s saying “Don’t worry if you think that Trump is silly, because Franken was silly too.”

I did a quick search on Salon for Carrie, and most of her pieces are CONSERVATIVE-LEANING.

Some sample headlines:

Obama’s celebrity obsession paved the way for celebrity President-elect Trump
Calling Jeff Sessions “racist” conveniently ignores the work he’s done….
Congress was right: The Iran deal is a travesty
Style over substance: Liberal darling Elizabeth Warren’s moral high…
Hillary Clinton’s bogus war on poverty
Liberals’ blind faith: The silence on the misogyny in the Muslim world

Conservative leaning? Yes, to some extent and there are plenty of areas for improvement and debate on what it means to be a conservative. The clear majority of conservatives agree with Trump on many issues and take him serious. The Republican party would be better off if it was open to more than one ideologue and it isn’t called The Conservative party for a reason. Someone had to break through that false impression of the Republican party and that person was Trump.

She isn’t pro Trump by any stretch of the imagination. And has been an outspoken critic of him throughout his entire campaign and even now in her most recent pieces that lean way more liberal (because they actually buy into the entire liberal argument that gets made up about Trump). Most of her Trump pieces start out good, mid-way through she slowly destroys her opening arguments and by the end there is a condescending remark to finish it all off. That tends to ruin the entire article and leaves her arguments open for debate, like asking an open-ended question (that you usually don’t want the answer for because you think you already have it). Only making contradicting statements.

I still do not view Trump as a comedian and think it’s a bad comparison. Businessmen, turned television personality to President of the United States.

Examples:

“Stand down, #NeverRomney conservatives: Trump’s pick isn’t a betrayal — and you might thank him in 2020” >>>> Romney didn’t get picked for several reasons and one of them is because they have polar opposite views on foreign policy. There would be a huge conflict of interest. Not to mention him and his nevertrump group spent all their energy trying to derail the Trump train. I had to actually read this stuff while it was happening during the entire 2016 presidential election. In some ways it was a little dehumanizing.

“Obama’s celebrity obsession paved the way for celebrity President-elect Trump” >>> Yes we don’t need a circus act like singing “Macarena.” Although comparing Trump to a comedian then saying “we don’t need a circus act” makes me question the entire intent of this one.

“Hillary Clinton’s bogus war on poverty: Her proposed minimum wage hike would only hurt low-income families” >>> Argument against Hillary and finishes with; ‘The truth is that I agree with Clinton that her rival Donald Trump has “taken the Republican Party a long way, from ‘Morning in America’ to ‘Midnight in America.’”’ That’s a very nice thing say.

Maybe my brain has just been warped in a way that is irreparable from reading this stuff and trying to figure out what the point is
she is trying to get across. Because I don’t know!